In the previous post, I introduced the issue of naming conventions. In this post I discuss how information about Spanish Naming Conventions can help you better understand the names of colonial American Jews and interpret their gravestones.

First a couple of general terms:

First name = "given name" = nombe

Last name (in the United States) = "surname" = apellido

Spanish Naming Conventions

Over Spain's history, depending on which culture controlled it, Spain switched between using surnames (apellidos) and patronymics (that is, names based on the given name of one's father or paternal ancestors). By the thirteenth century, however, surnames again dominated and had become hereditary. Surnames were sometime derived from patronymics (versions of the father’s name); yet, once they became surnames they stopped changing with every generation (they became "fossilized"). Other surnames were related to where the family was from (for example the Lucena family from Lucena, Spain), or occupations (Mercado – merchant), or plants or animals (Olivera – olive; Ovejas – sheep). When families were forced to convert to Christianity, many adopted the surnames of their Catholic godfathers, for example Henriquez, Gomez, or Rodriguez. Conversos who were related to or allied with Spanish nobility often adopted the names of those families and even their coats of arms (Malka 73-75). As a result, many of the heraldic symbols found on gravestones in the Atlantic World are shared by non-Jewish Iberian families with the same last name.

Occasionally family names were fossilized with older spellings (for example, Gomes spelled with an “s” at the end, rather than a “z”). Sometimes I have spoken with people think if their family spells their last name with a final “s” rather than “z” it is conclusive proof of Jewish ancestry. However, since spelling was rarely rigid in any of the colonies during this era, many families (and even individuals) would fluctuate between a variety of spellings of the name. Some names that were transliterated into Hebrew characters show a fluctuation between “p” and “f” even when using Roman letters, as the symbol for “p” and “f” are the same in the Hebrew alphabet (פ). Likewise during this era “y” and “i” were sometimes used interchangeably in surnames. Sometimes Spanish and Portuguese names changed spelling when people moved to a country that pronounced letters differently. For example, the “H” in Spanish is silent; hence, the name “Hoheb” was sometimes spelled “Oeb” in countries in which an “h” was pronounced.

Unlike the English who traditionally only inherited surnames from their fathers, people from the Spain and her former colonies often use two surnames: the first is the father's surname (apellido paterno) and the second is the mother's (apellido materno). Thus Isaac, the son of Leah Hernandes and Moses Nunes would be Isaac Nunes Hernandes. People were traditionally addressed by their father's surname or by the combined surnames. Hence Isaac would be Mr. Nunes or Mr. Nunes Hernandes, but never Mr. Hernandes). Or to use a more realistic example (since both parents would also have apellidos paternos and maternos), Isaac the son of Leah Henandes Castillo and Moses Nunes Levy would usually inherit the apellido paterno from each parent and hence would be Isaac Nunes Hernandes. Prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, however, individuals sometimes inherited an apellido materno, particularly in an attempt to secure an inheritance (wikipedia). Indeed, in some families children could chose their surnames from among all of their parents or grandparents. Thus, siblings might have different last names. Inheritance of apellidos was complicated by the fact that sometimes parents’ surnames were passed along as a composite in order to reinforce familial connections (Malka 74). This can make locating people in Inquisition records quite tricky.

Since sometimes one’s given name consisted of several names (Malka 74), the conjunction “y” (and) was sometimes used to separate surnames, particularly if one of the surnames might be mistaken for a first name. In contrast, the preposition “de” (or da in Portuguese) meaning “of” was sometimes used to disambiguate surnames and to indicate that the second name was toponymic (a place name). Hence the conquistador Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba name signified that he was of the Fernández clan from Córdoba (in Spain). Likewise del (a contraction of de and el meaning, "of the") was used for places: del Monte, for example, means “of the mountain.”

By the eighteenth century, however, Spaniards were also using “de” to indicate nobility (and ironically for families of conversos who used the “de,” to suggest that they had no Jewish or Moorish blood) (wikipedia). Since the of “de” was at times an affectation, one finds that the same family in the Jewish Atlantic World will sometimes precede their name with a “de” and at other times won’t. Thus, Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca was the son of David Aboab and Isabel da Fonseca (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com). Notice that his apellido paterno precedes his apellido materno (even though he is Portuguese--more on this in the next post). The “da” before Fonseca is toponymic: Fonseca is a place in Portugal. Da Fonseca was also the name, however, of a noble family, and the name was probably adopted by Jews upon conversion (http://www.defonseka.com/pe0008.htm). Some members of the Fonseca family in the Atlantic World chose to drop the “de” while others maintained it.

In Iberia and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, a woman retained her surnames when she married. Different versions of this custom were maintained by Sephardic Jews in the colonies: for example in Curaçao, women often used their apellido paterno as a middle name and took their husband's name as a last name. In Newport, children only inherited their father's last name(s) and women took their husband's last name(s) upon marriage.

Here is a concrete example: Hannah Rodrigues Pimentel (1720-1820) was born on the island of Minorca and moved to Curaçao before she was married. She was the daughter of Samuel Rodrigues Pimentel and Sarah Lopez. If she had stayed in Minorca, her name would most likely have been Hannah Rodrigues Lopez. She married Abraham Sasportas in 1735 and kept her name according to both Spanish and Dutch convention. Their daughter was named Simha Sasportas, though if the daughter had been born in Spain, she would have been named Simha Sasportas Rodrigues. Simha died young and hence never married. After her Hannah's first husband died, she married Jacob Rodriguez Rivera in Curaçao in 1741. Her children from the second marriage took the last name Rodriguez Rivera until they married, at which point her daughters took their husband's last names. (For example, her daughter Sarah who married Aaron Lopez became "Sarah Lopez.") When Hannah was buried, her gravestone was marked "Hannah Rodriguez Rivera." That is, after immigrating to the English colonies, Hannah and her children adapted to local custom and used English naming conventions.

References and Resources

Introduction

Jews in the American colonies were often known by several
names that they used depending on the circumstances: a Hebrew name for
religious records, a Spanish or Portuguese pseudonym under which they traded
with Iberian companies or Spanish and Portuguese colonies and under which they
might have been baptized while living as conversos
on the Iberian Peninsula, and a Dutch or British version of their name that
they used for everyday life in the colonies. Some Jews such as Aaron Lopez gave up their converso name (Duarte) upon leaving Iberia and adopted a Hebrew
name for everyday life (Aaron) rather than using an English version of his
Iberian name (which would have been
Edward). Since gravestones in the Atlantic World often contained multiple
inscriptions in different languages (e.g. Hebrew, English, and Spanish),
sometimes two or more of these names were united on a tombstone.

Other times, a gravestone favored one
identity over another, for example a gravestone might reject a converso name and identity for a Judaicized self.Thus, on the gravestone of Isaac Nunes we
find his name listed as Yshac Nunes Belmonte, with and the Spanish pseudonym of
Don Manuel is cast aside.

Gravestones can also provide useful information about
genealogical relationships as the father, mother, wife, or husband are often
identified in one or more of the inscriptions. Since Dutch and Spanish naming conventions include women’s maiden names
or names inherited from one’s mother, gravestones can often supply the link
between the different parts of one’s family.

In order to decode Jewish gravestones from the Jewish Atlantic World and
understand the familial relationships they convey, it is helpful to know
something about naming conventions popular during the era. While British colonial naming conventions
were similar to those found in traditional American families today (first name
plus a possible middle name, followed by a surname inherited from one’s
father), Dutch and Spanish naming conventions differed and were adopted by
those who were from or had lived in either the Iberian Peninsula, the
Netherlands, or the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch colonies. Traditions for first (“given”) names came out
of Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions, but also were impacted by which cultures
Jews lived among. The next sequence of posts on naming conventions is intended to help people understand the significance of what
names are used in the Atlantic World.

Reminder: you can browse the Gravestones in the Jewish Atlantic World Database by first name. This is a useful way to find out what names were popular among both Jews and Gentiles in the colonies. Coming soon, browsing by Family Name as well.

As I said in my last post, I have been working on a paper on houses owned by Jews in the American colonies. I am mainly interested in what houses can tell me about the families that lived in them and the kind of lives they led. Hence, when I investigate houses, I usually look at a variety of resources, including land evidence, estate inventories, floor plans, as well as actual images of the house. I discuss some of these resources in the Houses Assignment handout, but in this post I will mainly talk about how I use historical photographs to better understand houses.

When I am studying a house, I like to visit it (if it is still standing) and if possible photograph it to get a sense how the house is laid out and how space functions within it. Yet, I also often rely on insights gained from
historical photographs. Are there aspects of a house newer than I might have thought? Is my experience of the house today deceptive in important ways?

Historical photographs can help be get a better sense of how the houses themselves and how the space surrounding the houses have changed over time.

This post gives three examples of what kinds of evidence historical photos can provide:

Changes in the landscape due to ecology

Changes in the landscape due to built environment

Changes in the house itself

To illustrate the first two types of changes, I use historic photos oflandhuizen (country estates) in Curaçao. To illustrate the third type of change, I turn to a merchant house in the island's main port of Willemstad.

Landhuizen

When I was in Curaçao in May, I was struck by how different not only the landhuizen (plantation houses) looked from earlier photographs, but also how different the landscape looked around them. Here are two examples. The first--Landhuis Ascencion--illustrates ecological changes and the second--Landhuis San Juan--illustrates changes in the built environment.

1. Landhuis Ascencion

When I visited Landhuis Ascencion, I was struck by the historical photos displayed inside the house and how greatly the landscape had changed. Here is one of the historic photos of Landhuis Ascencion that is displayed inside the landhuis today:

Although many early landhuizen were used for growing produce and raising livestock, over time the estates often became country houses used primarily for recreation. For me, the differences in the quality of the soil and the amount of vegetation in the different eras was an important reminder that these changes may have been due to ecological shifts on the island (or overgrazing by goats!).

Although some landhuizen had hundreds of goats on them in the colonial era, today the general lack of goats around certain estates has allowed plants to grow back. Here for example is a view of Ascencion from nearby Dokterstuin showing the lushness of the relatively goat-free landscape.

As I study the records of the landhuizen on the island, I have become increasingly interested in the changes in the number of animals sold with a particular estate, as changes in livestock populations might indicate changes in the land itself. Changes in the land impact how the house was used.

2. Landhuis San Juan

Historical photos can also point to changes in the build environment around a house. For example, historical photos are a good reminder the the number of people who lived near a house or worked on the estates may have changed over time.

Here is a satellite view of Landhuis San Juan today, courtesy of Google Earth. Note the lack of other structures around the main house, though the outline of the walls of the former corrals is visible:

Landhuis San Juan and Environs today in Curaçao, courtesy of Google Earth

The term landhuis itself refers both to the
“great house” (kas di shon or kas grandi) and the estate itself,
“including the magasinas, or
warehouses, a cistern for water,” stables, corrals, guard stations and cells
for punishing slaves, the stone huts of slaves (later servants), and kin plots
(familial burial grounds). The people (and livestock) that worked the estate were considered so much a part of
the landhuis that most sales of landhuizen included not only the land
and buildings, but also the slaves, livestock, and possessions associated with
the buildings (Gravette 162). For example, when this
particular plantation (Landhuis San Juan) was bought in by Elias Pereira in 1712 for 12,000 pesos,
it included among other things the 82 slaves who lived there, a sugar mill, 467 cows, 302 sheep,
and 374 goats (Emmanuel and Emmanuel 65, 663).

This historic photo of San Juan (ca. 1913) illustrates the way in which the empty landscapes of the landhuizen today is misleading. How many smaller houses can you count near the great house?

Each of the small structures around the house is a small slave house (or in the case of the 1913 photo a former slave house) associated with the estate. Here is an example of a historical photo of what one of these houses would have looked like:

Historic photos are an important reminder not to forget the people who literally built and sustained older houses. What role did these extended members of the household play in the life of the great house?

3. Penha House

In my final example of what we can learn from historical photos, I'd like to focus on how historic photos can provide evidence about changes in the house itself, though the photo I'll use is also a reminder of changes in the built environment of houses. In this example, I turn back to the image in the top left corner of the page.

This is one of my favorite early photos from Curaçao. It was taken around 1890 by Robert Soublette of "De Breedestraat in Punda in westelijke richting" and looks down Breedestraat, one of the central avenues in the older Jewish Punda neighborhood and ends its gaze at the famous Penha house on the right along the waterfront. As the Tropenmuseum notes, "Robert Soublette (1846-1921) and his son Tito (1870-1938) were at the turn of the most important photographers in Curaçao." In addition to taking studio shots, they took a fair number of photos out doors, often of the same locale several years apart (Tropenmuseum). These "retakes" makes the work of the Soublette family particularly useful for studying changes in architecture over time.

I love this photo in part because we can see a man (on the left) in the street surrounded by goods from the waterfront. I am also intrigued by the difference from today in the view across the bay. More importantly for now, though, as we look down the street in the photo above, the house on the right along the waterfront with the arched window facing us on on the second floor is the Penha house.

Here is a similar view of the street (ca. WWII?) from Anthony Loo's Album with Penha house in the same location, though seemingly farther away. Notice the view across the bay has changed:

To situate you, the view of the 1890s photos is marked on the map below of the Punda neighborhood from the Snoa museum
with the blue arrow pointing down Breedestraat towards the waterfront.
In this map you can see the relative location of the fort and the Snoa (Mikve Israel Synagogue). The Penha house is on the corner of Breedestraat at the waterfront.

Here is the view again along Breedestraat, only in 2010. Again we are looking towards the Penha house:

One of the iconic features of the house is the decorative program in white along the sides and front. You can see these details in the image above, but they are also prominent along the more famous sides facing Fort Amsterdam and the waterfront (below).

What differences do you notice between the 1890s and 2012 in the house itself (see composite below)?

Composite of Penha house from Southeast along Breedestraat, 1890s vs. 2010

I hope this posting will encourage people researching houses for either family histories or for school to keep an eye out for historic photographs of houses they are researching. Many of the photos I used in this post are from Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen in the Netherlands, but those researching early American houses in the United States would do well to begin their search for historical photographs in local historical societies and at the HABS collection at the Library of Congress.

Are you researching a house? If so, I would love to hear about and what resources you are using.

Resources

Emmanuel, Isaac S. and Emmanuel,
Suzanne A., History of the Jews of the
Netherlands Antilles (Cincinnati, OH: AJA, 1970).

There are several Jewish families who can be found in the colonial records of many of the port towns of the Atlantic World. One of these is the Jesurun Family (also Yesurun, Jessurun, and Jeshurun). Jesurun (יְשֻׁרוּן ) is a variation of poetic variation of the people of Israel, that means "upright one" from the Hebrew word Yashar. It can be found in the Torah in the book of Isaiah (44.2) and D'varim (Deuteronomy) 32.15, 33.5, and 33.26 (Bible Encyclopedia).

One of the more illustrious members of this important family who lived in the colonies was Hakham Raphael Jesurun, the second resident of the Rabbi's house at 26-28 Kuiperstraat, in Curaçao. Hakham Jesurun was born in Hamburg to the Hamburg Hakham Moses Jesurun, and had been a star pupil in Amsterdam's yeshivot. His wife was Rachel Sasportas, the granddaughter of Hakham Jacob Sasportas of Amsterdam. The gravestone of Hakham Jesurun (1748) was engraved
with a depiction of an angel approaching the distinctive portal of the Snoa: two Doric columns with
a verse from Psalms 118:20 above the lintel: “This
is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter into it" (Arbell 140; Emmanuel 296-7).

Here is a partial list of some of the ports in which the family lives in the 17th-19th centuries, along with gravestones of selected family members (they also lived in St. Thomas and Panama, though I don't have any photos from there):

If you have been to the colonial Jewish synagogues in Curaçao, Barbados, or Suriname, or the (Old or New) Jewish Cemeteries in Curaçao, you will begin no notice recognize an interesting pattern: black and white tiles arranged in checkerboard fashion surrounding entrances to buildings and around the base of gravestones. This pattern can also be seen in the nineteenth-century Jewish houses in the Scharloo district of Curaçao. It is often referred to by the name "mosaic pavement." (Mosaic Pavement outside Neve Shalom Synagogue in Paramaribo, Suriname at Left.)

Mosaic Pavement in the Newer Jewish Cemetery in Curaçao

If you are a freemason, the pattern will seem doubly familiar. Mosaic pavement was (and is) a staple of both Masonic
architecture and ritual objects. Masonic carpets and later floorings employed
the mosaic pavement motif. used
the pavement in the center of their sanctuaries either in tile or on a rug, usually surrounded by a border and with the symbol of
a blazing star at the center. Although Masons were not the only people to use this type
of flooring during this era, mosaic pavement took on special resonance within
Masonic rites and are usually noted in emblem charts (like the one below) and were often used in Masonic lodges during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Masons--like early American Jews--were interested in mosaic pavements for a reason. Neo-classical marble checkerboard floorings reflected a general
interest in antiquity, but they were also explicitly associated with Solomon’s
Temple throughout the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. While Amsterdam Rabbi Leon de Templo
depicts the interior courtyard of the Temple Mount in his model as paved in uniform square
tiles, other scholars of the Temple explicitly used the checkerboard motif for
the Temple’s courtyard, such as Samuel Lee in the diagram to the left. By at least 1730, mosaic pavement design (often
in the form of a floor cloth) was a mainstay of Masonic Temples because of the
pavement’s Solomonic association. When early Masons met in coffee shops, they
decorated the meeting spaces with Temple motifs.

Indeed, until the nineteenth century when lodges
expanded their membership and more routinely acquired property, lodges used
portable symbols, badges and signs to signal connections to Solomon’s Temple
and set an appropriate mood for meetings. Other important Temple symbols used in masonic rites included the Ark of the Covenant and the pillars of Jachin and Boaz (the two pillars in the emblem chart above).
Even the apron worn by masons (such as George Washington below) has been read as related to ephod(apron) of the sacred garments of the Kohen Gadol, shown below on the left of the frontispiece of the Amsterdam Haggadah of 1695.

George Washington in Masonic Regalia, including the Masonic Apron. "Washington as a freemason," (
c1867). Courtesy of the Library of Congress,
LC-DIG-pga-04176

I have been thinking lately about Rabbi's houses in colonial America, in part because I will be speaking about early American Jewish houses at the AJS (Association for Jewish Studies) Conference
in December, and in part because I have been transcribing a section of
the minute books of Congregation Nidhe Israel in Barbados in which the
Rabbi, his house, and his household keep getting mentioned. Today the
historical Rabbi's house in Curaçao is a tranquil oasis, but apparently during the colonial era the houses were vibrant places to visit or live.

In Curaçao, like in Barbados, Suriname, and Amsterdam, the Rabbi's house was part of the synagogue complex that also included a mikveh (ritual bath), school space, and the synagogue itself,
called the “Snoa” in Curaçao and Esnoga in Amsterdam (Ladino: אסנוגה). Although the house in Barbados has been destroyed, the Rabbi's house in Curaçao is still standing and is beautifully maintained as part of the exquisite Jewish Historical Museum.

The Rabbi’s House was
built in 1728 at 26-28 Kuiperstraat, in the heart of the older Punda neighborhood. Although it became part of the a group of buildings that now form the synagogue complex, the house predated the
placement of the synagogue: as the Jewish population on the island flourished,
the congregation outgrew its initial space and moved in successively in
1671-75, 1681, 1690, 1703. In 1729 the fifth synagogue was destroyed in order
to build the sixth (and final synagogue) adjacent to the Rabbi’s home.Although early on a house was adapted to meet
the congregation’s needs, both in 1703 and 1732, the community built a
structure explicitly as a synagogue. The current house was likewise an
extension of a predecessor. In 1704 the Mahamad (Board of directors or council of elders of a Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue) bought a larger house for Rabbi Eliau (Elijah) Lopez and his successors. This house was “revised” in 1728, the
date it now bears (Emmanuel & Emmanuel, History,
51, 87-88, 93-95, 120-24, 143, 1163).Unlike
Merchant houses, which often housed offices or goods for sale and were located
near the wharf, the “business” of the Rabbi’s house was primarily ritual and
liturgical. By the 1730s the Snoa had to compete with a second synagogue and Jewish school in Otrobanda, though the Snoa complex still laid claim to being the house of the Island's Rabbi.

Architecturally the house shares many features with its neighbors, including the graceful balconies (shown above and below) that were so popular in the Punda neighborhood during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that helped keep residents cooler.
Like Amsterdam’s
canal houses, older houses in Curaçao were usually built with brick. Unlike in
Amsterdam, however, where the brick was left exposed, in Curaçao the brick was
typically covered in plaster or stucco (Winkel-151-55).The plaster was then whitewashed or painted
in a “bright bold palette” not favored in the Netherlands.Allegedly houses began to be painted because
an early governor found the white-washed buildings “fatiguing to the eye” due
to the way the reflected the tropical sunlight.

The Jewish Atlantic World Database is now open and free to use! In the collection, you will find over 5,000 images related to Jewish life in early America. The database includes both photos of material
culture (gravestones, ritual baths, synagogues, houses, furniture, etc.) and
archival documents (probate records and land evidence) from many of the
key ports where Jews settled in North America and the Caribbean, as well as
several crucial ports from which they immigrated (Amsterdam, London,
Hamburg). Also included in the
database are samples of non-Jewish (and later Jewish) artifacts to allow
students to better assess what made Jewish life distinctive. Keywords allow
visitors to connect artifact to other items related to the same individual,
family, ethnic group, location, port town, or theme. Right now you can browse or search, or look for records by the individual's name. Soon we hope to have a complete list of family names to browse as well. You will also find resources to help you analyze the objects in the database or to use in the classroom. Looking for something or someone and can't find it/them? Let me know, as we are still adding items to the database each week! Here are some important colonial Jewish families you will find in the database: Lopez, Henriquez, Senior, Curiel, Gomez, Hoheb, Hart, Rivera, Maduro, Seixas, and many many others.

This collection began when I was doing research for Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life.
In this book, I am interested in the ways in which colonial American
Judaism was as much an embodied religion as it was a textual or
faith-based practice. That is, I argue that we should think of colonial
American Jews as a “people of the body” as well as a “people of the
book,” and I look to the ways that everyday objects helped define and
create Jewish identity. By sharing the images used to create this book, I
hope to enable students, scholars, and family historians to trace the
paths that early American Jews (and their objects) took, as well as to
gain a richer sense of their everyday lives.

If
you would like to learn more about the religious life of early American
Jews and the objects they used, please feel free to order a copy of Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life from ISBS or Amazon.com.
Purchase of the book is optional, however; this website is freely
available to the public as an educational, not-for-profit tool for
teaching and learning.